Blair Boone-Migura - Founder, President, Executive Director

Blair Boone-Migura is an arts administrator, educator, musician, writer, and public radio show host on NPR-Hawaii. He is a published film and music journalist whose written many reviews, and profiles, and he's interviewed a wide range of artists from Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Fred Hersch to Grammy Award-winning Haitian-American singer and producer Wyclef Jean for publications like MetroSource Magazine and NYC Resident. After accumulating over ten years of project management and client relationship management experience, Blair has also managed to transition into an executive role serving most notably as the director of client relationship management at a document processing services firm in NY. He has managed a number of strategic relationships at major firms, publishing and advertising companies, including Yahoo!, MetroSource Publishing and CIBT, Inc. Blair is also a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the office of President Barack Obama during his administration for a demonstrated commitment to building a stronger nation through community and volunteer service. He currently teaches part-time as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Hawai'i in the Music Department and at Punahou High School in the French Department.

Blair began his study of voice and piano in Houston before moving to pursue his Bachelor’s in Voice Performance (honors) and Master’s in French Language, Literature and Culture at Syracuse University. During his academic tenure he was nominated for and received many awards including the university’s most prestigious Remembrance Scholar Award (named for the 35 students killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland), and The SU Graduate Teaching Fellowship in French. He also studied voice and piano at the Strasbourg Conservatory of Music in Strasbourg, France. After graduating and moving to New York City, Blair began teaching French and coaching singers in French diction and the French Mélodie. He also holds a second Master's degree in Vocal Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College in Princeton where he graduated with honors and distinction. In addition to coaching singer's privately in the French vocal repertoire, Blair has taught as a part-time adjunct French language faculty member at The New School (Parsons School of Design & Mannes School of Music), Hunter College and Queensborough Community College. He is currently a guest lecturer in the music department at The University of Hawai'i where he teaches art song literature courses in French Mélodie and German Lied as well as vocal pedagogy.

In May 2013, Blair also had the honor of assisting the legendary piano collaborator Dalton Baldwin, along with two of French song's most accomplished sopranos Elly Ameling and Rosemarie Landry, and several other highly notable adjudicators of distinction in the development and execution of the Positively Poulenc Vocal Competition and Recitalunder the sponsorship of Joy In Singing at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. In April and May 2014, Blair collaborated with the French American Cultural Exchange and the Artistic Department of the French Cultural Services and aided in the execution of two arts festivals: ART2, A French-American Platform on Contemporary Art, and DANSE, A French-American Festival of Performance & Ideas.

Blair has served in the past as the Arts Administrative Director at another non-profit arts organization, The International Vocal Arts Institute (IVAI) in New York where he proudly joined co-founders, Joan Dornemann and Paul Nadler, in realizing their core mission of finding and training the most talented young opera singers around the world - "passing the torch from one generation of to the next".

In September 2016, Blair joined Gary Hickling as a co-host on "Singing & Other Sins" a radio show that Hickling created that airs on Saturdays on Hawai`i Public Radio KHPR 88.1-FM at 5pm HST (also streams online on HPR-2 at hawaiipublicradio.org). On the show, he presents on-air and online content on artists ranging from Swedish tenor, Jussi Björling to American soprano, Jessye Norman, on art song composers from Richard Strauss to Henri Duparc, and has interviewed prominent artists like American composers, Dominick Argento and Ned Rorem, American conductor and pianist, Thomas Muraco, and American collaborative pianist and author, Thomas Grubb. Program archives can be found: http://lottelehmannleague.org/ singing-sins-archive/

Blair is a specialist in the art song composer Henri Duparc and has authored several theses on the French composer. As a performer, Blair has given art song recitals representing such composers as Berlioz, Brahms, Debussy, Duke, Duparc, Fauré, Hahn, Mahler, Poulenc, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, and Tchaikowsky. Blair is also currently the co-host of an internet-radio show called "A Toast To Song" sponsored by his nonprofit arts organization The Art Song Preservation Society of New York (ASPS) where he serves as Executive Director. ASPS is dedicated to revitalizing the art song tradition through education and performance. It's "where music speaks, and words sing!" Blair founded ASPS because of his concern and deep interest in promoting this declining area of vocal literature and in honor of his mentor of twenty-two years, master French and German song specialist, Mary Trueman (1915-2008). ASPS's master class and recital programs are currently hosted by The Manhattan School of Music. Blair studied voice with Mary Trueman (Rice University), JoElyn Walkefied-Wright (Syracuse University), Elisabeth Schroeder (The Strasbourg Conservatory of Music) and Elem Eley (Westminster Choir College), and has sung in master classes with Oren Brown (The Juilliard School), Phyllis Curtain (Yale and Boston University) and Norma Newton (American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria). Blair has coached with Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Barbara Smith Conrad and internationally acclaimed specialist of the French vocal repertoire, Thomas Grubb (The Juilliard School and author of Singing in French: A Manual of French Diction & French Vocal Repertoire). Blair also studied piano accompaniment with Mary Trueman, Steve Heyman (Syracuse University) and continues to study piano privately with Edward Nemirovsky in NYC.

Blair has appeared on Bravo’s Queer Eye For The Straight Guy as the Fab 5’s original culture expert. He has been a featured critic on VH1, has appeared as a guest on TheHoward Stern Show and was featured as a gymnast in a Panasonic commercial promoting the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Blair is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (N.A.T.S.), the New York Singing Teachers Association (N.Y.S.T.A.), the College Music Society (C.M.S.), and the Alliance Française in both New York, New York and Honolulu, Hawai'i. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Alliance Française Hawaii and The Art Song Preservation Society of New York.

Blair is married to Dr. Anthony Migura, a critical-care physician at Advanced ICU Care, a pulmonary/critical care staff member at Queens Hospital, and an assistant clinical professor with UH Medical School. They divide their time between New York City and Honolulu, Hawai'i with their English Bulldog, Drew and American Tabby Cat, Jessye.